Out of the Night

Irene Bennett Dunn
Nonfiction, 128 pages, 6" x 9" softcover

ISBN 1-879268-16-3

In Out of the Night, Irene Bennett Dunn relates the tragic night of August 17, 1959, when an historic earthquake and resulting landslide killed four members of her family, and how she rebuilt her life after that terrible trauma.

On the night of August 17, 1959, Irene Bennett Dunn was camped with her husband and four children on the banks of the Madison River near Yellowstone Park when an earthquake of 7.5 magnitude hit, causing a massive landslide to sweep over the campground. Irene survived along with her 16-year-old son, Phil, but the rest of her family perished. Out of the Night is about the tragedy that took four of her family members; moreover, it is about how she survived and gained the courage to rebuild her life with her son, Phil.

Irene Bennett Dunn was born in 1919 in Nebraska and moved west to the small town of Hope, Idaho, in 1936. She attended school in Hope, graduating in 1938 with a class of seven students. She married Purley "Pud" Bennett in 1941 in Coeur d'Alene, and they had four children, Carole, Phil, Tom and Susan. Three years after the disastrous earthquake that claimed four member of her family, Irene married Jack Dunn in 1962, and they lived together on a farm in Hope for many years. She started writing Out of the Night, a story of tragedy and hope, with the urging of her family and friends after she retired from teaching elementary school. She passed away in 2007 at age 87.